Peoples v. Campbell

• Decision Date: 21 July 2004
• Docket Number: No. 98-6882.,98-6882.
• Citation: 377 F.3d 1208
• Parties: John W. PEOPLES, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Donal CAMPBELL, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, Attorney General of the State of Alabama, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

377 F.3d 1208

John W. PEOPLES, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Donal CAMPBELL, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, Attorney General of the State of Alabama, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 98-6882.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

July 21, 2004.

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Perry D. Mathis, Birmingham, AL, William C. Cagney (Court-Appointed), Windels, Marx, Lane & Mittendorf LLP, New Brunswick, NJ, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Beth Jackson Hughes, Montgomery, AL, for Respondents-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before TJOFLAT, ANDERSON and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

On December 7, 1983, in the Circuit Court for Talladega County, Alabama, a jury found the Petitioner, John W. Peoples, Jr., guilty on five counts of capital murder.¹ The trial judge accepted the jury's sentencing recommendations² and on January 27, 1984, sentenced Peoples to death on each count. After exhausting his direct-appeal and post-conviction remedies in state court, Peoples applied to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court denied relief, and Peoples now appeals. We affirm.

This opinion is organized as follows. In Part I, we recite the facts established by the evidence presented to the jury during Peoples's trial. Part II recounts the procedural history of the case in the Alabama courts — at the prosecution stage, on direct appeal, and on collateral attack — and in the district court on habeas corpus. Part III states the issues we address and the legal standards we apply in resolving them. In Part IV, we analyze these issues and decide them. Part V briefly concludes.

I.

In the evening of Wednesday, July 6, 1983, after the sun had gone down, Peoples, accompanied by his younger cousin, Timothy Gooden, drove his Toyota pick-up truck to the lakeside residence of Paul and Judy Franklin in St. Clair County, Alabama. Peoples went there intending to purchase Paul Franklin's red 1968 Chevrolet Corvette.³ When the two men arrived, Peoples got out of the pick-up truck and entered the residence. Meanwhile, Gooden drove off to a nearby store to buy a pack of cigarettes. Gooden returned around 9:30 p.m., and he joined Peoples and the Franklins who were sitting around a table.

Peoples soon left the table to look for the Franklins' ten-year old son, Paul, Jr. He found Paul, Jr. wearing his pajamas and watching television in another part of the house, and he brought him to the table where Gooden and the boy's parents were sitting. At this point, Peoples asked Paul Franklin to sell him his Chevrolet Corvette. Franklin refused, explaining he wanted to keep the car for his son. Peoples persisted, but to no avail. So, he became angry and left the room.

Peoples returned moments later with Paul Franklin's .22 caliber Winchester rifle and some blankets and ropes. With Gooden's help, he gagged and blindfolded Judy Franklin and Paul, Jr., then took Paul Franklin⁴ downstairs to the basement, leaving Gooden to keep an eye on Judy and the boy. In a minute or two, Gooden heard a commotion from the basement and started down the stairs with Judy and Paul, Jr. At this point, Judy Franklin nudged Gooden in the side; he removed her gag, and she told him she needed to go to the bathroom. Gooden consented. Once inside the bathroom, Judy Franklin found an eyebrow pencil, scribbled the name "John Peoples" on the lid of the laundry hamper, and covered the lid with clothing. When she left the bathroom, Gooden replaced her gag and blindfold and took her and Paul, Jr. to the basement where they found Paul Franklin lying on the floor by the pool table. He appeared to be dead.

Following Peoples's instructions, Gooden moved the Toyota pick-up truck to the basement door. That done, Peoples and Gooden secured Judy Franklin and Paul, Jr. in the pick-up truck. Peoples then covered Paul Franklin's body with a blanket and placed it in the Corvette along with Franklin's Winchester rifle. With Gooden following in the pick-up truck, Peoples drove the Corvette to a wooded area in neighboring Talladega County. After parking, he dragged Paul Franklin's body into the woods. On returning, he armed himself with the Winchester rifle and took Judy and Paul, Jr. out of the truck. With Judy Franklin screaming and begging for their lives, he pulled them into the woods. There, he murdered them by crushing their skulls with the rifle. Gooden remained with the Corvette and pick-up truck while all of this was taking place.

When Peoples had finished, he and Gooden returned to the Franklin residence and rummaged around the house in search of money. They stayed for ten to fifteen minutes then left. Peoples, driving the Corvette, went to his apartment in the City of Talladega, at the Talladega Downs complex, arriving after midnight. Gooden drove Peoples's pick-up truck to his home, also located in Talladega.

Barbara Eastwood, one of Peoples's neighbors, was walking toward the Talladega Downs when Peoples arrived at the apartment complex. After Peoples got out of the Corvette, they had a brief conversation about the car, which she had not seen before. He told her that it was an early birthday present for his wife. As they were talking, she noticed what he was wearing — a light colored shirt and blue jeans.

A half hour later, around 2:00 a.m., Peoples left his apartment with his wife and drove to Gooden's home to retrieve his pick-up truck. There, he showed Gooden some cash — in excess of $1,100 — and told him he would "fix him up" later. After a brief conversation, Peoples and his wife departed.

Later that morning, Thursday, July 7, the Franklins' housekeeper of three years, Rosa Lee Truss, arrived at the Franklin residence. She found the front door unlocked and no one at home. Most of the lights in the house and two television sets were on, and the Corvette, which was usually parked in the garage, was missing. As she began her housekeeping chores, "a little voice" told her that something was wrong and to get out of the house.⁵ So she left the residence in a hurry.

Mr. Franklin's mother, Rose Franklin, came to the Franklin residence at approximately 2:00 p.m. that day and was surprised to find no one home. After waiting at the house for some time, she became increasingly concerned. She called her other son, Hugh Franklin, in Blakely, Georgia, and Dean Choron, Judy Franklin's mother, to find out if either knew the whereabouts of the family. Neither had heard from Paul or Judy, so she called the St. Clair County Sheriff's Office to report that the family was missing.

That night, at around 8:00 p.m., two deputies in that office, Gary Cone and Jimmy Martin, responding to the phone call, came to the Franklin residence. They looked around the house but saw nothing suspicious. Nonetheless, they radioed a message to the sheriff's office that the Franklin family and their Corvette were missing. Later, when the deputies returned to the sheriff's office, Cone filed an incident report and inputted the Corvette's license tag number into the National Crime Information Computer (the "NCIC"), which tracks and compiles a list of automobiles reported as stolen or missing.

The following evening, Friday, July 8, Investigators Marvin Roye and Ed Traylor of the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (the "ABI") arrived at the Franklin residence along with Owen Harmon, an investigator in the St. Clair County Sheriff's Office. Rose Franklin and Dean Choron greeted them when they arrived. Among other things, the investigators wanted to know whether they had noticed anything missing other than the Corvette. Both women had looked around the house and felt that everything seemed to be in place; nothing appeared to be missing. The inspectors spent approximately three hours going about the house. When they came to the basement, to the place where the Corvette was usually parked, they noticed a boot print in an oil slick on the floor. The print matched the sole of one of the boots Peoples was wearing the night of July 6, when he and Gooden came to the Franklin residence.

Two days later, on Sunday, July 10, with the Franklin family still missing, Roye and Traylor returned to the residence. They discovered John Peoples's name written on the laundry hamper in the upstairs bathroom. Dean Choron recognized the handwriting as her daughter's. When Roye asked her if the name John Peoples was familiar to her, she told him that she had heard the name mentioned but had never met the man. Rose Franklin said that a John Peoples had done some work around the house, had borrowed money from her son in the past, and recently had been trying to borrow more money.

The next day, Monday, July 11, Paul Wesson, the owner and proprietor of Wesson's Pharmacy, which was located in Childersburg, Alabama, called the town's chief of police, Ira Finn. A man was trying to sell Wesson a red 1968 Corvette, and he was interested in buying it. Something about the offer seemed strange, though, so Wesson decided to call the chief to find out if anything was amiss about the car. Finn was aware that a red 1968 Corvette had been reported as missing on the NCIC. He told Wesson that another police department was looking for a car like the one he was describing and that some of his officers would be arriving at the drug store in a few minutes.

Shortly after 1:30 p.m., two squad cars carrying Captain Lewis Finn and Officers Harlow and Watson arrived at the drug store. The Corvette was parked in front of the store; Peoples was inside the store with Wesson. Captain Finn told Peoples why they were there and asked him if he would be willing to come down to the Childersburg police station to discuss the matter. Peoples agreed. He drove the Corvette to the station, with Harlow as a passenger; Finn and Watson drove the squad cars. Meanwhile, Chief Finn notified Investigators Traylor and...